Digital health and clinical decision support: The HealthSOAF project and the Calabria Headache Network

Good clinical governance of headache implies efficient and accessible diagnostic and therapeutic pathways involving different levels of health care. Headache syndromes are often diagnosed and treated inadequately. Information and communication technology (ICT) can play a key role in improving access to treatment and, from the clinical management perspective, in increasing the levels of quality, efficiency and prevention. The HealthSOAF (Service-Oriented Architecture Framework) is a networking and interoperability technological platform, designed to assist healthcare decision making and improve access to care at appropriate levels. The Headache Network operating in the Italian region of Calabria provided the HealthSOAF platform with its first real test bed in Europe, with the aim of helping clinicians working at different levels of health care to correctly diagnose, manage and refer headache patients. Use of the HealthSOAF platform in this experimental pilot study was found to be associated with enhanced diagnostic accuracy and appropriateness of referrals to specialist headache services within the area considered, suggesting that ICT-based clinical decision support based on a network of information tools can improve the clinical management of headache.